Blasting the Future

The time is ripe for a fundamental reassessment of the impact that Futurism had on British culture and of Vorticism - the specifically British avant-garde movement inspired by the founder of the Italian Futurist movement, Filippo Tommasao Marinetti. This text, which accompanies an exhibition at the Estorick Collection of Modern Italian Art, combines novel material and original research to provide a coherent overview of Futurism and Vorticism, before, during and after World War I. The exhibition is the first major showing by the movement since 1974 and the text illustrates works in a wide range of media by England's only Futurist, C.R.W. Nevinson, and by the core of artists associated with Vorticism: Wyndham Lewis; Edward Wadsworth; Frederick Etchells; William Roberts; Henri Gaudier-Brzeska; Jacob Epstein; and Jacob Kramer. The influence exerted on these artists by the Italian Futurists Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Gino Severini and the mercurial impresario of Futurism, Marinetti, is explored fully. The works illustrated are from a range of prominent public and private collections, a number having never previously been exhibited.